Children's Parties - What I've Learnt So Far

Next week my daughter will be 10 and rather than writing something reflective on the joys of being her mother, I was struck by the thought that I've done ten years of children's parties and so thought I'd share my experiences so far.  If you've yet to have kids, let this be a rough guide to what to expect.  If you already have children - feel free to enlighten me on the parties I've missed out on!

The 1st Birthday Party

Don't kid yourself that this is for your baby.  This is an opportunity for you to acceptably drink alcohol in the middle of the day while you pat yourself on the back for 'making it through' the first year.  Your baby will not appreciate that he or she has 'guests' (ie. other babies, relatives and knackered mums that have squeezed themselves back into their skinny jeans in order to feel normal but are still wearing black tops because when other babies cry their breasts leak) and will definitely not appreciate the many (tasteful, preferably wooden) presents, preferring the paper instead.

The Soft Play Party

This takes place in a former factory that has boiler lagging and scramble nets attached to every available surface.  Where it normally costs you £5.00 to get in, you will instead spend £11 a head for the added extras of nuggets and chips on paper plates (and if you go to Eddie Catz you'll also get a plate of crudités thrown in that the children will ignore) plus a visit from a budget 'character' that will either scare the children or will be scared by the children as they try to wrench his tail off. 

There is nowhere for parents to properly relax so they will head off into town to do some shopping leaving you to spend most of the party worrying where the "little boy who has a tendency to start fights with other children" has got to.

The Professional Entertainer Party

Some of these guys cost £300 - THREE HUNDRED POUNDS!  Their waiting lists are months long and they have seen you bloody coming.  You are guaranteed a great set, children in tears because of a sinister puppet or because the entertainer has called them their pet name in front of all their school friends and angry parents as the entertainer starts singling them out for kicks - "look everyone, that daddy's got a baldy head!" and "that mummy's eaten all the biscuits!".  I've yet to meet anyone that's done this kind of party more than once.

The Do It Yourself Party

So you go to a Professional Entertainer Party and think "that's money for old rope - I could totally do that!  I'm going to hire the village hall, make all the sandwiches, decorations and party bags the night before and then we'll play party games just like when I was five and we all had a party in the front room."  This is a BAD MOVE although you won't realise that at first because it will start off being the best party in the world.  Then you'll lose your audience as the children realise that there's 30 of them and (at most) 5 grown ups (all the other parents have pissed off because there's no way they're spending three hours making small talk and besides, Next has a sale on).  The children will refuse to play Musical Statues because "that boy is always cheating", someone will have a nosebleed, and the "girl who only eats mini-sausages" will eat everybody's mini-sausages which causes a riot.  You will wish you'd paid £300.

The Whole Class Party

Do it once because, frankly, you have to.  Then never do it again.  It's like the 'Do It Yourself Party' but on speed.  It will take you a week to recover, and your child two days to open all the presents (I'm not a big fan of conspicuous consumption but I'd rather not hold a party than earnestly ask my friends to plant an acorn on my child's behalf instead of buying another necklace-making kit).

The Really Easy Party

This has just started to happen in my life and it is *bliss*.  By the time your children get to 10 they're (hopefully) free of tit for tat party invites and the whole 'Whole Class Party' thing has died a death.  Pick two to four friends, take them to the cinema, bite to eat afterwards and you are done!  Brilliant!  I shared this opinion with my daughter's friend's mum today and she conspiratorially whispered "I know, it's great - we do it too!".  Now this may sound a little smug on my behalf but I plan to enjoy every minute of this stage because I know what it is to be at an:

Out of Control Teenage Party

What to say here without incriminating anyone?  Let's just put it this way:

Thunderbird

Uninvited guests

Breakages

Police

Furious parents

Clean up operation that included having to scrape vomit from the pocket of a pool table

So until I get payback for my own terrible teenage behaviour, here's to Really Easy Parties - long may they continue!

Match Report: London Irish vs Harlequins

Blue skies
Tricolour hats
Club ties
Pints of black stuff
Irish eyes

A beautiful game, but not quite the result we were after...

Piper, drummer
Battle cries
Game on
The crowd rise

Shields and sinews
Strapped-up thighs
Explosive power
Gasps, sighs

'Quins fan turns
says "No surprise"
Half time
Hot pies

Second half
Game ties!
Pushing forwards
Exiles vies

For home team glory
Last minute tries
The time's run out
There is no prize


(If you prefer your match reports a little more, well, sports-like, click here: http://www.london-irish.com/news/gutsy-exiles-defeated-by-harlequins/bp871/)

The Body: What you Should Know

Behind this smile lies discomfort,
massive discomfort

Walking past TopShop the other day (naturally I didn't go in there - those detectors by the front door aren't to catch shoplifters, they're a magnetic field to repel anyone over the age of 35) I saw a picture of Beyoncé wearing what I thought was a swimming costume.  But it wasn't a swimming costume, no, it was a fashion garment so terrible that it brings women like me out in a sweat: THE BODY.

As someone who wore a 'body' for many years (although only one photo survives - see right where I have teemed it with a PVC waistcoat c.1991) I feel that I must pass on the following advice to anyone considering such a purchase.

Things to know before you buy a body

1. They come with poppers.  At the crotch.  Like a baby-gro.  

This will cause one or all of the following:

• The inability to do it up without either giving yourself a wedgie, trapping your pubic hair or (worse still) your skin.
• The poppers to release themselves at an inopportune moment, causing the flaps to work their way up to the top of your waistband.  There is no 'tucking in' that will fix this.  You'll have to either excuse yourself or forgo all dignity and forage around in your trousers in the middle of a meeting / at the dinner table.

2. They make going to the toilet impossible

Watch that flap at the back!  It is specifically designed to be the optimal length to get dipped in the toilet / wee'd on.  If this happens you are either going to have to go topless or spend the rest of the day with a wet noonie.

Should you find yourself in that horrible position where there is no loo roll and you have to 'drip dry', doing the poppers up is especially tricky and potentially unpleasant.  What are you going to wipe your fingers on afterwards?  How are you going to unlock the door now you've got wee on your hands?

3. Sometimes you just forget....

Ever seen a woman wander out of a nightclub toilet with a flap of fabric hanging out of the back of her trousers?  Excessive refreshment makes doing up poppers between your legs either too much of a faff or you simply forget there is an extra bit of admin to do before you flush the chain and unlock the toilet door.

4. They will cause a fight between your breasts and your bum

If you've got a daughter involved in gymnastics then you will be fully versed with the 'picking leotard out of bum move'.  This is what you're letting yourself in for (and it's unlikely that you're going to look like a gymnast).  The body is an item of clothing that simultaneously pulls down your tits and carves its way across your buttocks making your backside look like a joint ready for roasting.   You could put on a Wonder Bra to counteract the dragging effect but this then creates a war between your extremities which will cause the gusset to become so taught it will unmercifully chafe your bits until you're forced to un-popper it.  At which point the back flap will come out and you'll have to clutch it between your legs like this....  

Could someone help me please?  My body has unpoppered itself...
Photo from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36045466/beyonces-ivy-park-clothing-line-crashes-topshop-website

5. They make your life complicated

Do men wear these?  No they do not.  Why not?  Because they're a bloody pain!  The only way to make your fashion life more complicated would be to combine a body with a pair of dungarees. Nobody would do that would they?  Would they?  Aaaarggh!

https://swavy.com/post/beyonce-paige-overalls-givenchy-backpack   

Smoking

Basingstoke: Guy Fawkes' Night 1986

A gang of children are hanging out in 'the woods' just in front of the old peoples home where local mothers put on pale blue housecoats and aprons to look after the oldies.

The bonfire has a plank running across the centre of it and boys are riding their bikes through the flames.  Children play catch with firelighters bought from the Co-Op - why pretend you've got a hot potato when you can hold real fire in your hands?  We are out in the dark, unsupervised.

A boy (one of a pair of local twins who I am "not allowed to play with") turns to me and asks "do you want one?".  He is tall and slim, thin lips parting to show sharp teeth as he offers a lit cigarette in his bony hand.  I am eleven and impressionable - I take it.

I put the cigarette in my mouth and suck - the smoke enters my mouth and I cough it out.  It's like eating the remnants of an ashtray (and I should know, having been caught doing exactly that as a baby), I hand the cigarette back and run away.

Woodley: Late 1995

It is late evening and I am cold.  I'm wearing a short silver A-line dress, shiny tights and patent black dolly shoes.  I'm going with a colleague to see a DJ at the After Dark Club but we stop at his local pub first to collect his friend.  The pub is full and I am out of place - my short denim jacket not adequately hiding the fact I am dressed for clubbing, not playing darts.  

I clutch the bottle of Becks that is offered to me and stand close to my colleague.  A man correctly observes that I am "not his girlfriend" but is assured via some choice words that I am there as a friend, not a bit on the side, and that I am not up for grabs.

The man we are waiting for arrives.  He has hair like Action Man, dark brown eyes and neat, straight teeth.  "I thought you were going to be a bloke", he says.  He offers me a Silk Cut and I am hooked.

Stop Leaving Stuff on the Stairs!

And this is on a 'good' day

Sometimes I think no-one else cares
About the crap that gets left on the stairs
Coats, jumpers and Crocs
Gloves, homework and socks
That are dirty, and never in pairs

Sometimes I think everyone's blind
To the detritus they leave behind
They sail past each tread
On their way up to bed
While I seethe as I count each new 'find'

Why don't they clean after themselves?
Do they think we've got housework elves?
Well I've had enough
Of picking up stuff
Our staircase shall now be called "shelves"

A Night in a Bookshop

A man shape-shifted into a gangsta Peregrine Falcon
A woman nearly choked to death by being an unsuspecting participant in "Dorito Roulette"
We took a tour of a sales floor
A Kraken cast bones across the ocean
God roared and wept
A one night stand was documented with a flawed jewel
A wedding ring was lost and found
A son was remembered
A bookshop filled to the gills with people
A stack of books toppled onto the toilet floor

Thank you Hungerford Bookshop

Freedom

I missed my own anniversary.  My business anniversary that is; my wedding anniversary is seared into my brain like a brand on a juicy piece of steak because it is a bona fide reason to call on the in-laws to babysit overnight so we can enjoy a night away and a lie-in (children steal your lie-ins forever, that's a fact).  Anyway, I had missed my business anniversary but thanks to the power of LinkedIn, a flurry of messages over the past couple of days have informed me that:

Five years ago I ditched my corporate career

This makes it sound like I threw it out of a moving car (which I would quite happily have done on more than one occasion - and then backed the car up and run it over for good measure.  And then got out of the car and stamped on it.) but in actual fact it was a planned move.  I had decided to go, sought advice, put a (kind of) financial plan in place and then gone to become a "freelancer".  

A freelance what?

Initially I started out offering Alliance Management consultancy because I was good at helping businesses to figure out how to work with Microsoft.  I still do it a little bit, in subtler ways but something happened that I wasn't expecting, and it took me in an entirely different direction to the way I thought I was going to go.

Blog off  

This very blog that I started writing to celebrate my freedom got picked up by Cosmopolitan and then people started asking me if I would consider blogging for them.  And then I started ghost writing for people who simply didn't have the time to write the stuff that they kept getting told they should be putting out there - funnily enough thought leaders and captains of industry are often too busy to spend three hours at a keyboard crafting content.  And because of this, I started getting asked to write other stuff - web copy, eShots, LinkedIn profiles, even poetry for events and off-sites.  

Write on

And the more I wrote, the more I got asked to write.  Luxury brands, small businesses, start-ups, charities and individuals all asked if I'd give them a hand. 

Some days I write about skin aesthetics, others about cloud computing.  The day I had to write both a white paper and a best man's speech was a pretty interesting one.  Every day I get a proper writer's work out, and there's nothing like flexing your writing muscle to make you want to write more.

Lessons Learned

And at the same time that all this was going on I was getting a chance to properly put into play all the things that the corporate training courses that I had attended told me about - especially in the realms of managing cash flow and profitability.  The training was right but the context was wrong.  The theory of running your own P&L is wonderful in helping you understand your customers but it's not until you actually run your own that you really get it (especially that first time you realise that you didn't save enough for your tax bill...).

Tales of the unexpected

Quite aside from the fantastic thing that was realising I had carved my own career as a writer (thus proving my English teacher right - just 20+ years after her initial assertion that I should "do something" with my writing), the past five years have included publishing three books, becoming a trustee of a fantastic charity and making some tentative steps into stand-up comedy, all of which have made a massively positive impact on my life and all of which I don't think I would have had the courage (or time, let's be honest) to try when I was still employed by a corporate.

What's next?

If I've learned anything over the past five years, it's that the best thing about freelancing is in the name - being free.  Free to make choices and mistakes, free to take risks and opportunities, free to create your own definition of success.  Free to decide to spend a day doing stuff that you have chosen to do.  And it's because of this freedom that I can't say for sure what will happen over the next five years - who knows what ripple in my life the next decision will create.  Whatever happens - I'm glad I took that first step.  Happy Anniversary indeed!

Soundtrack: Freedom! '90 by George Michael